Time Salvager

Executive Summary: Enjoyable, but not as much as the Tao books. I was also a bit disappointed to find out it's the start of a new series.Full ReviewLast year year I discovered Mr. Chu when he did an interview on the Sword & Laser podcast.I picked up his first book, [b:The Lives of Tao 15981711 The Lives of Tao (Tao, #1) Wesley Chu https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1361886088s/15981711.jpg 19932371] quickly consumed it, and immediately moved onto the sequel. I really loved that series and can't wait for the follow on series.I was disappointed with Tor's decision to release this book around the same time as several other SFF books I was eagerly awaiting, making fitting it in a challenge. June or August would have been better for me personally. I'm sure that sort of thing will vary from person to person, but I only know one other person who read this book so far.However, I was eager to support him with his first “big” publisher release, and see how well he could write in a different world. My results were a bit mixed.Most of my issues are expectations. With a book called Time Salvager and a synopsis saying how the protagonist: “James is a chronman, undertaking missions into Earth's past to recover resources and treasure without altering the timeline” I expected there to be far more time travel than there was. To be fair, there is a decent amount by the end, it was just not what I expected.I do think Mr. Chu does a good job with the Time Travel. Then again, I'm not a hard sci-fi person who gets caught up in thinking out the consequences/side effects of time travel. Thankfully I don't have to, as many of those things are addressed in the book.I also didn't realize this was the first book of a series. I guess I should have either assumed so (stand alone books are a dying breed lately) or maybe I just missed that the first time I read a synopsis. When you're nearing the end of a book you think to be stand alone, wondering how the author is going to wrap things up, and it just sort of ends, that's extremely jarring.After reading his Tao series, I also expected his characters to be a lot more likeable. I came around on some of them in the end, but I despised most of them for a large portion of the book. That's likely by intention, but I have a much harder time reading books with characters I don't like. James character developed as the book went on, making him more likeable. Meanwhile Levin didn't really change at all, he simply was made more likeable by his proximity to another character far more despicable.The thing is, I always enjoyed reading this book when I picked it up. The writing is excellent, the action is good, and the world building is interesting. There is far less humor in it than his Tao books. That's probably appropriate given the world he's built, but the humor was one of the best parts of those books for me.For some reason though, I just never was in a rush to pick it back up, which is part of why it took me so long to read it. I suspect if I had different expectations going in, or on a reread I'll like this one a bit more. I do plan to pick up the sequel. Things end in a pretty awful place. I want to know what happens next. It's always hard to stop books in a series. The unresolved issues aren't nearly as bad as [b:The Deaths of Tao 17726421 The Deaths of Tao (Tao, #2) Wesley Chu https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1376921492s/17726421.jpg 24804136], but I immediately had to go look up if/when there was a sequel coming.Overall, a decent book, but I'm looking forward to the next book in his Quasing universe more than I am to the sequel to this one.

Guess I should start with this: there's nothing in these pages that'll remind you of Chu's Tao books. They could be written by completely different authors. Which is a combination of good news and bad news. The good news is that the reader doesn't get a deja vu feeling reading, Chu's ability as a writer and worldbuilder is displayed, and we get to see that he's not a one-trick pony. The bad news is, the Tao books were better.

Not that this is bad, it's just not Tao.

Chu is really smart about the way that he introduces us to the world, to the concept of Time Laws, and ChronoCom and all the rest of the things that you can read about in the jacket copy (or at the link above). Maybe it shows that I read too much bad SF as a kid, but I'm still really impressed by SF writers who are able to blend things into dialogue and story rather than just resorting to info dumps.

This is a Time Travel story where the Time Travel's not really all that important. It's just a tool. Like a cell phone – something that people use, but don't really understand. No one (well, one person) here understands how it works, but they can use it. Ditto for all the nifty future-gadgets. So it makes it easy for us to not worry about it, too, and just go with the flow.

When you clear away all the bells and whistles this is a pretty straight-forward story about corporate greed, ecological/societal collapse, and a few people trying to do the right thing with the cards stacked against them (even if that pits them against each other). The bells and whistles turn this into a SF/Time Travel/Dystopian Love Story.

Not the best thing I've ever read by Chu, but interesting enough to make me glad I read it, and I'll be back for #2. Maybe with is he can do something to make the series something I can get excited about.

4.4 stars.
Such an underrated book. I loved it so much. Maybe I'm biased because I love anything time travel.
The earth is inhabitable and James is basically an agent who goes back in time to retrieve resources and information that might help delay humanity's demise but there is several rules.
1.) You don't do anything to effect the timeline
2.) Do NOT bring someone out of the past
James ends up failing and has to escape his own timeline to escape death